


Choose Wisely

by Desdemona



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdemona/pseuds/Desdemona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson doesn’t have to. He has the right to be hurt. To be human. Clint can barely remember what that’s like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose Wisely

**Author's Note:**

> Dunno if there's enough layers for this be meta or not. All I know is that Clint and Coulson break my heart in ways I didn't see. Tumblr did this. I'm still not sure if it did me a favour or not here but I like to write so I'll forgive it.

 

They never really talk, him and Coulson. It’s about orders most of the time, directives and need-to-know and targets and dossiers to burn once memorized. He’s not a talkative guy in general, except with Natasha and even then, it’s more of a special language between them, comprised of looks and mouth quirks and a little Russian here, Mandarin there.

But he’s perceptive, aware. Super human kind of aware because you had to be super somehow when you worked with the group he did. And yet when he sees Coulson’s shadowed form ease into the break room as Clint himself is coming out of the simulation rooms, Clint doesn’t need his heightened senses to know what the hard C-shaped slump of Coulson’s shoulders mean.

He has only a second of debate because this isn’t his style at all. This is something Rogers would do. Maybe even Stark. But they aren’t here to help or to take over and he is. So Clint heads down the hall and into the break room. The space is too big for the name though. It’s a huge space, with archways leading into the kitchen for the do-it-yourselves, another leading to a cafe, a scatterings of tables all across the way. There’s high-def, flatscreens on the walls and somehow, it’s this place that has both weirded him out the most and made him the most comfortable.

S.H.I.E.L.D may deal in impossible things that affect every soul on the planet and then some but it was still run by flesh and blood humans. And flesh and blood humans needed a place to have a lunch break and catch up on their soaps.

There’s a soft light coming from the kitchen, the even quieter clink of glass. There’s enough light to guide him through the room to the archway. Coulson is in the process of making coffee though it’s around three in the morning. Clint watches him go through the motions, Coulson’s hands steady but slow like he’s moving in a fog.

Concern tickles the hairs on the back of Clint’s neck. This is definitely not his style. But he’s already stepped to the line. It’s not in him to go back. Clint swings his bow onto his back and walks over. Coulson stares blindly at the pot, doesn’t stir a muscle when Clint stands beside him to glance at the window next to them. Below them, the ocean is a dark glossy mirror reflecting a hazy moon.

When the coffee machine dings perkily, Coulson still doesn’t move. So Clint does. He gets two mugs out of the cabinet above their heads and reaches for the pot, unsurprised when Coulson’s body shifts to let him by. Clint fills up the mugs and goes back out to find a seat. When he settles, Coulson is just coming out the kitchen in that same stupefied state.

Clint waits.

Coulson eventually sits and takes the mug Clint holds out. They sip at the same time before Coulson puts his mug on the tabletop and doesn’t pick it up again. Clint looks at his coffee because it’s never occurred to him until right now that all of them are extraordinary because they have to be.

But Coulson.

He doesn’t have to. He has the right to be hurt. To be human. Clint can barely remember what that’s like.

Yet there’s Coulson, like a shining beacon of it in his suit and tie, hair combed just so. He’s tidy and efficient, the face of the people the Avengers stand for, fight for. Coulson is their humanity, no matter how badass he is on a regular basis.

Clint takes another sip of his coffee and wonders if he’ll have to make the first move. His social graces aren’t exactly great.

Coulson finally blows out a breath. It sounds painful, like it’s coming from somewhere too deep. “I knew better than to try to have a life.”

Clint remembers a rumour then, from Stark, about a cellist. He’s not sure why Stark mentioned it though he also remembers a little comment about secret love affairs and a smile that was full of things that Clint was pretty sure Stark didn’t have the clearance to know about.

Moot point.

“In this business, you can’t,” Clint says quietly. “You can’t put this aside to live and you can’t really live with this either. You learn how to breathe on the fly.”

Coulson puts his elbow on the table, presses his forehead against his fist. “I wanted it so bad that I forgot how to do that. My chest hurts.”

Clint takes another drink of his cooling coffee and doesn’t sugarcoat it. “It never stops. Sometimes, you think about getting a physical, just to make sure your lungs are still working.”

“Except they are,” Coulson sighs. “I really tried though. But I guess it wasn’t enough.”

“No one wants bread crumbs.”

“Funny.” Coulson lifts his mug again, drops his arm. “That’s what she said.”

Up until then, Clint had been watching Coulson’s body language. More out of habit than anything else. But he finally meets Coulson’s worn out gaze and knows that despite everything, Coulson would have kept collecting those bread crumbs.

Because Clint still finds a few in his pockets here and there. Except his smell like gun powder and blood. But then, Coulson’s probably do too.

“Do you ever wish you took the blue pill?” Clint doesn't think that’s what he was going to say originally but he suddenly knows that it’s what he needs to ask. Or needs to know. He’s not sure anymore.

The faint shadow of a smile breaks the monotony of dejection on Coulson’s face. “All the time.”

Clint stares down at his mug. “Me too.”

Coulson turns a TV on after a long, quiet moment, flicking through channels until it lands, without any irony, on the _Matrix._

By unspoken agreement, they settle into watch, long after their coffees have cooled. When it ends and they go their separate ways to their rooms, theirs is a tacit agreement to never speak of this night, when two men revealed that they were too human for their own good, in a world that would punish them for it in the most brutal of ways.

Clint makes sure his door is secure behind him before heading into the bathroom. He skins out of his work out clothes until he’s bare-assed in front of the mirror. He’s covered in scars, the signs of the times when his mortality had crippled him when he’d needed to be stronger than ever before.

Stark, he thinks, would understand. Natasha...well, Natasha. But Coulson understood most of all, didn’t he? He thinks about earlier, how he thought that he was the wrong man to talk to Coulson.

“Maybe not,” his scarred and battered reflection says. “Maybe not.”

But what good did it do to dwell on this?

“Nothing,” his reflection whispers. In the end, they’d taken the red pill. Accepted this world. Joined the never-ending fight. There was no going back from that.

They would always have to breathe and run. Until someone stopped them from doing one or the other.

Or both.

“Bam,” his mirror twin mocks.

Clint shuts off the light. Maybe he can get in a few more rounds of practice before morning drills.

 

 

 


End file.
